Sociamind

The following is a copy of post that I recently made on the MindManager Forum regarding the features of the next version of MindManager 2017, to be released later this year.

Mindjet have just released a “preview” of MindManager 2017 due to be released in September this year which highlights the following features (my comments in brackets):

• HTML5 export of interactive maps which can be opened in most browsers (presumably an expanded and updated version of the current very basic web export facility);

Example screen shot of MindManager 2017 (source: Mindjet)

• Export map content to “over 700 leading cloud apps” like Slack, Box, OneNote, Google Docs, and Gmail through Zapier (as I understood that this is already available through MindManager Enterprise, I assume this means this facility is being extended to the standard version. I assume this will address the current lack of OneNote integration which a number of users have been seeking);
• The ability to transfer Gmail items and send content and status updates into maps as topics using Zapier (fortunately, it appears from the screenshots that MM can still communicate directly with Outlook);
• New horizontal and vertical timeline templates which can be filtered (this is a feature which users have called for several years and which is increasingly available on competing products);

Continue reading →

Update: I have published an updated and simplified method for importing task lists from Word which does not rely on splitting the table into rows as described in the post below. This is Part C of a series of articles on importing from Word and should be read in conjunction with Part B which covers importing non-task tables. Part A looks at the importing of standard non-table text from Word.

1. Introduction

Recently I posted a series of three articles that discussed how to use MindManager’s Gantt table to export a user-friendly to-do list with task data from MindManager to either Excel or Word, noting that despite its numerous export options the program lacked a facility to produce such a simple list easily (yes, exporting to Excel does produce a list but if you have a multi-layered map the tasks will spread across several columns which is difficult to read and time-consuming to turn into something more user-friendly).

The opposite – importing a task list complete with this task information created in either these programs direct into MindManager (MM) – is even more difficult. While MM will happily import a Word document with the appropriate heading structure or (albeit a bit more grudgingly) a table, in both cases it either ignores the task information or imports it rather uselessly as sub-topics or topic notes. Continue reading →

Welcome to the first Sociamind post of 2016.

Recently I described my technique for using MindManager (MM) to write blog posts which involved exporting a map to Word and then importing from there to WordPress. I extolled the virtues of using WordX, the Word export add-in from Olympic Limited, to complete the MM to Word export process rather than MM’s built-in export facility, mainly because of the former’s much greater flexibility in selecting what to export and at what heading level, and the fact that it retains the Word template styles and style names.

In the article I commented that as I mainly use WordX I had not tried the standard MM Word export for this purpose though I believed that it should work, with the caveat that the process could be complicated by MindManager adding its own version of the Word heading styles. Subsequently in responding to a query on the Mindjet forum I’ve checked out whether a document created in Word using the standard MM export can be imported successfully into WordPress, only to discover that while it is imported it loses its Word heading structure. This is because WordPress doesn’t recognise the Word heading styles which MM introduces. Continue reading →